


Requiem Æternam

by hitlikehammers



Series: Risorgimento [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Or Ice-Crossed Love Really, Or Time-Crossed Love, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Romance, Shared Dreaming, Star-crossed love, Til the End of the Line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:33:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth is: cryostasis is still a form of sleep. </p><p>Just because you're frozen doesn't mean you cannot dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem Æternam

**Author's Note:**

> Countless thanks to my dearest [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for betaing this beast, and for recovering the lost bits of babble that I'd sent her and subsequently lost from my own hard drive. You're a marvel, my dear <3
> 
> Mostly, this was an idea I just couldn't get rid of. And I've always had this fascination with the darker, more human side of Steve Rogers—the side that's young, the side that needs, the side that's selfish like everyone is selfish. So: that. That's kind of what's happening, here.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> And please, do let me know if the formatting/hover-translation/series information looks strange or doesn't work—it's gone back and forth and while I've refreshed, updated, and rejigged it as much as I can, it's apparently still a bit wonky on some browsers, for reasons unknown. Mea culpa. 

The impact is beautiful, Steve thinks, maybe, in the way sunrises are: the crush of metal and ice are the same damn thing like this, right here—the way momentum, the way friction melts and shapes and holds him, cushions the blow as his body wracks, as his spine bends and his chest heaves and there are hands on him that aren’t his own, because his own are crushed, plastered tight against the controls, and it’s cold because he can draw in a breath, and still there are hands on him, hands that hold and keep the worst of the wrenching at bay and he knows: it’s the end now. It’s the end now and that’s okay.

Bucky will be waiting.

He closes his eyes, and that’s beautiful, too—no maybe about it, not like this.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


The impact is darkness. He blacks out before he hits the ground.

But when he comes to, the crush of bone and the crush of ice all sounds the same: raw, fire in his throat as he screams, as he tries to feel anything but unbearable heat in whatever is throbbing, whatever is streaming, gushing from the place where his arm is, was, should be straight and is nothing close, and he can’t bring himself to look because there’s something vile, and stir-crazy stuck in his gut that his chest hurts too hard to bear.

And there are hands, eventually: two hands, not his, and they’re cold where he’s burning, and they’re cruel where he’s spent, and wherever they’re taking him, he thinks it’s a lost fucking cause, because this is the end. This is the end—he blinks, and it’s sticky, it’s wet where the salt dances round with the chill—this is the end, and that’s fine.

That’s fine, because at least Steve’s still breathing, those eyes are still shining, that smile still bringing in light to the world.

And if there’s a Heaven, like Steve always said, well.

If there’s a Heaven, then Bucky’ll get to see by the light of that grin once more, if there’s any sense to it, any fair dues.

He opens his eyes, and there’s only white, and he feels the very moment that the breathing in him stops.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Whatever’s after—dark and cold as it is, all mild glows and shifting beams, candles cast through broken glass; whatever’s _after_ , takes the lungs in Bucky’s chest that died and crushes them so that he whimpers with all the air they’ve got, because what’s after, _this after_ , is wrong.

It’s wrong, because there’s Steve.

There’s Steve, whose chest isn’t rising, whose body isn’t moving, whose eyes aren’t even twitching where they’re hidden by the lids: whose face is pale like the brightest of the lights that scatter, and it’s Brooklyn in the Winter of ‘36, and it’s the way his cheeks had gone white for the fear and red for the way his eyes wouldn’t stop streaming, his ribs all tight and brittle because if Steve wasn’t coughing like he was trying to hack out his liver, then he was still, so still, and Bucky had to lower his own shaking body, careful as he could, down to Steve’s chest to try and feel something, _anything_ , and if Steve’s pajamas were full of holes, if his blankets were paper-thin, Bucky’s tears on his fevered skin weren’t doing him any favors, except he couldn’t help it, couldn’t help the bursting of something nameless at the center of his chest when he finally found the beat in Steve’s, because damnit, god _damnit_ ; and if Bucky’s here, here and now, if this is death and what comes after—

If Bucky’s dead, then this is Hell. Because there’s _Steve_ , and he’s not _breathing_.

His body feels wrong, unbalanced—all the pieces are there, but it feels like a lie, like he’s parts instead of wholes but that’s Steve, that’s probably Steve and the fact that Bucky would have followed Steve only to the step before the ends of the earth, because from there he’d take the lead, take the fall, and never know what it would be like to live in a world where his own heart just beats for one person, where his soul’s lost its anchor and all the compasses point wrong.

His body feels wrong, but there’s _Steve_ , and so he runs, he runs and he trembles and his hands are on Steve’s chest, his face above Steve’s lips and if this is Hell, then it can’t be real, because there’s Steve, but if it’s anything less than damnation, then _please_ —

Bucky’s palm shakes for the space of a gasp—the space of a sob where there’s nothing, where the things beneath the skin are soft and still—but then there are eyes.

Then there are eyes, and his palm is cradling a strength that still feels like a prayer that makes no sense in the answering: there are eyes and a heart that moves and there are lips that grin and there’s light.

There’s _light_.

“ _Jesus_ , punk,” Bucky bows his head against the hollow of Steve’s throat, hisses through the teeth he has to keep clenched, lest he lose everything to the way his own pulse is pumping, fierce and heavy. “Talk about giving a guy a damned heart attack.”

He feels the broad splay of Steve’s hand against his own chest, out of nowhere, and lifts his eyes to meet the wide stretching fear in Steve’s gaze as he presses hard against Bucky’s ribs, blinks in time with the thrashing of the muscle there until it calms, until it breathes, until they both can breathe.

“Buck,” Steve whispers, and it’s the way it used to be: it’s the mopping up of cuts and scrapes, it’s the breath of calm after Steve’s lungs think twice about betraying him, it’s the perfect still that sometimes used to settle between them, filled with all the things they couldn’t say, couldn’t own, couldn’t even recognize for sure because it wasn’t possible, it wasn’t possible that two people with that much roiling, molten and aching behind their hearts could end up crossing paths, could end up feeling so damned much just to multiply it by two.

“Buck,” Steve says again, somehow softer—impossible—and his hand’s at Bucky’s jaw, just shy of cupping his cheek.

And damn it all, but Bucky leans. Bucky leans, and they breathe. And it’s Heaven.

Bucky’s goddamned sure of it.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve’s entirely convinced this is Hell.

Because the feeling of the skin on Bucky’s cheek against his touch, the soft cloud of warmth when he exhales that twists around Steve’s face, the staccato beat of the blood in him against Steve’s thumb at the neck: it’s perfection. It is everything he never knew the words to match, swelled up unforgiving in every inch of his body, every cell: magnified when the inches of his body, the cells that made them up grew greater, could hold what it meant to have James Buchanan Barnes in the heart like the muscles there that clenched and gave and made life with every shiver that they gave.

It’s perfection, it’s Heaven in every way Steve was taught to hope.

And then it’s gone.

Because they’re stretched upon the bed—the bed he’s been in the whole time, and it’s strange, because he knows, they both _know_ that there’s more to here, whatever here is, wherever here leads to or from: there’s _more_ , and yet, it’s meaningless, because they’re stretched upon the bed and when Bucky breathes, his chest touches Steve’s and it’s maddening, it’s fire in his veins and Steve is panting for no good reason at all, staring wide-eyed at Bucky as their hands intertwine and they stay, just staying and staring and soaking each other in: the taste of proximity that used to be familiar but has matured, has changed to spark different places on the tongue, and speaking of places for Steve’s tongue—

He doesn’t blink, even. He makes a point to keep his eyes open when he leans, because they’ve said nothing with words and everything with the way their heartbeats nearly echo in the dim: he doesn’t blink, because he can’t miss this. If he’s a coward, a fool for all the things he should know how to say, then he’ll have courage, he’ll be bold enough to see this, to watch every twitch of Bucky’s cheek, every bit of curl that shapes his mouth, every tiny space that grows between his lips as they part: every individual lash framing those eyes as they flutter, fall closed, and—

Nothing.

There’s nothing.

Bucky’s gone.

Steve’s on his feet: Steve’s screaming, Steve’s begging, Steve’s raging. Steve’s searching for a sign, any sign, of where Bucky’s gone, what’s happened, what’s been done, what _he’s_ done for him to lose like _this_ , but there’s nothing.

There is _nothing_.

Steve’s breath comes in, shallow, and it was weaker lungs that succumbed like this, before, but he knows the feeling as he tries to take in air and fails, fails, fails everything he needs and everything he wants and everything he lo—

He tries to breathe. He fails, and if weaker lungs are what gave into the dark before, the heart of him’s as soft as ever, cast just as stupidly wide, and the hollows raked inside the pulp of that bloody, trashing mess are as deep as anything.

He tries to breathe, he fails, and if dying meant Bucky would be there with him, then maybe he’d only managed the job halfway, so he tries to breathe.

He fails.

He waits for it to work, this time. 

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Hell, Bucky thinks, is not strong enough a word for what comes next.

And it’s not just because he’s bound to a table again, with those beady eyes behind those bottle-glasses staring at him, sneering at him as his heart has a fit in his chest, as he pulls against the restraints but it’s useless, _useless_ —

It’s not just because there’s metal where his arm should be, metal that seems heavy even strapped down, metal that doesn’t _feel_ except for the sharp jolt of agony that rips through him as they prod at it, as they fiddle with wires and panels and nuts and bolts and build, build _him_ except it’s outside him, it’s not his, it’s not _him_ —

It’s not just the way they murmur, the way they bark, the way they scream but he screams louder, and Bucky doesn’t have to know the language to know what’s being said is cruel, even as the language itself is being carved into the jelly of his brain, syllable by foreign syllable, the blade all rust and hate and the kind of laughter that pours sick across your bones.

But it’s not just the fact that he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t move; it’s not that his limbs are being moved without him knowing, it’s not that his body doesn’t seem to belong to him, here, and his mind’s trying to follow but it can’t, he won’t let it: that’s not what makes him sure.

Steve’s not here. And thank god for that, thank whatever god might listen, because at least Steve’s safe, except—

Steve’s not _here_. He’s lost his _Steve_.

That’s how Bucky knows this is a damn shade worse than whatever Hell’s got in mind.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve can’t see straight.

At first he thinks, he dares to think, to hope it’s all in his head—his own mind betraying him, a dream within a dream—because it had all gone dark for the lack of air in his lungs, in his blood, and when he opens his eyes there’s still a haze over everything, _everything_ , even the empty space where Bucky had been: just there, right up against him, close enough that Steve’s skin had been warmer for the breath of him, that the line of his back had been softer for the beat of his heart at the center, but Steve’s cold now, still cold, and breathing is impossible, again, breathing is unthinkable, impossible, and he’s cold.

Steve’s cold, and his own heart’s screaming, and he cannot _see straight._

And he looks. Of course he does, despite the haze, despite the chill, despite the way his chest aches, damn well _bleeds_. He looks, and he yells, and he tries to find where Bucky’s gone but it’s thick in his veins, the fact of it: he’s alone.

He’s alone, and he failed. He failed his friend, he failed his heart—he couldn’t reach and he couldn’t save and for all that he’d spent the long hours, the endless days before this time, this place begging, pleading, praying on his _knees_ until his throat went hoarse for one more chance, _one_ more _chance_ to confess the feelings, the depths of everything he is and was and felt to the man who was everything, who was the needle of his compass and the North it spun to point toward, the rhythm of a pulse that only learned how not to falter and fail for all that it was weak because there was a steady palm, a strong grasp against him, upon him: something real to hold to fight to keep. But he’s alone, now, and there’s nothing to hold to, nothing to fight for anymore, and in his mind or against his skin there’d be a chance, one more _chance_ and whichever God had offered it up, he’d failed Him, too; and his hands are numb where they’re reaching for a piece of his world, a piece of the very goddamned _soul_ that’s slipping away, always slipping, always falling down.

His eyes are sore, his skin is raw, and he remembers what it’s like, being unable to breathe, gasping where his lungs refuse to fill: he remembers, and he falls to his knees and he shakes but it’s not for the air, or the lack of it.

It’s not for that, at all.

“If this is a dream, now,” he shivers out through the clench of his teeth, through the burn in his bones and the fear, and the loss, and the way the whole of him seems ready to give way. 

“If this is a dream, without him, let me wake up,” he begs, harder now than he had for second chances, deeper now for the emptiness that surrounds him; he begs, he prays like he’s never prayed before: 

“If this is death, then finish the job.”

It’s cold here, alone. It’s so cold, and his face is wet, and he’s breaking, it’s breaking, he’s...

“Finish the job, please,” Steve moans, curling in on himself, and he closes his eyes and sees more that way, sees the horror and the hurt and the look on Bucky’s face as he fell, and he gasps again, to no avail, and sobs out, the pieces of it sharp as his pulse beats _One—More—Chance_ , as his voice cracks harsh on a truth that’s somehow less even as it’s more:

“ _Please_ finish the job.”

  


————————————————————————————————

  


The last thing he knows is the metal hand that’s not his hand, covered in blood that’s not his blood.

That’s the last thing he knows before the darkness, the steel, the stale air underground turns glassy and filtered, like church windows at sunset, and there’s a weight on Bucky’s chest that lifts with that, but only for a second.

Only for a second, because he’s in this place, this place that makes no sense except that it feels better than everything that tries to add up straight; feels more right than blades and bullets and the way his memory’s hazy around the edges for all the things he knows belong in between: this is _right_.

But he’s in this place, see, and his breathing can’t help but to echo.

He’s in this place, and he’s very much alone.

But if there’s one thing Bucky knows, beyond the fact that this place is right and alone is wrong and anywhere without Steve is very, _very_ wrong: the one thing he knows like the way his blood can pound is how to look for the man who makes it sing—he knows how to find Steve Rogers.

If he’s made for anything in the whole goddamned world, he’s made for that.

“Steve?” he calls out, walks before he runs, before he walks again, breaths coming in short, shallow pants for all the reasons that come with the heart for the way it hurts instead of pumps. “Come on, buddy,” he pleads with the quiet, with the shivering shafts of color and light that break off and scatter everywhere, nowhere important: nowhere with a Steve.

“Steve, come on,” he asks it, begs it low: “I know you’re here, Steve,” he whispers, and he wishes the clamor he hears was more than the banging on his ribs, wishes there was more than just his breath to break the still. 

“I know it,” he grinds out, harsh and half-weighted to the ground with despair, so soft for it that it almost gets swallowed in the way his feet hit the ground: almost, not quite.

Not quite, because it’s Steve. It’s Steve, and there’s no giving up on that man. There’s no backing down without a fight to the bitter end of the line.

So he walks until his legs give out. He looks until he sees: sees the form curled in itself, so small, so fragile in the shadows that it’s almost like bones have shrunk and muscles shriveled, and there’s a sliver of a punk in front of him that he knew, that he knows, that he’ll always know and fear for in the deepest parts of him—will give the whole world for, his whole _self_ for, without a question; without a thought.

Asked or unasked. Wanted, or otherwise.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes out as he reaches Steve’s side at a run. “God, Stevie,” and it’s only once he’s right on top of him, once he’s falling to his knees to draw level with that perfect blond head that he realizes how Steve’s shaking, that he hears the way Steve’s gasping and choking bounce dagger-sharp in the space around them as his chest heaves and falls inward, hollow, again and again and again, and Bucky knows this, Bucky knows this from his nightmares, and the too-many times his nightmares spilled from his head and came to life.

“Breathe for me, pal, come on,” he says with a hand on Steve’s chest, the other on his shoulder, bracing and rubbing and _there_ , because he knows this. He knows this, and he tells himself that just because Steve looks small and helpless and about to fucking break, it’s different, and whether this is life or death, real or imaginary, Steve’s chest is strong and broad even as it trembles. Steve’s heart was always huge and full except that now it’s beating heavy, harsh and strong where it would’ve stumbled, where it would have threatened to give out before, and take Bucky’s with it. 

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky murmurs, and keeps holding to him, keeps rubbing at the skin, slow and steady, never flinching, because this is what he knows. “Just breathe.”

And it takes a while—too long, far too long, and there’s a voice in Bucky’s head that he hates, because it makes his chest tight, but it’s a voice that tells him the Steve from before wouldn’t have lasted through a fit like this, not even close; it takes a while, and Steve’s still shaking and panting and his heart’s still going wild under Bucky’s hand, but there’s breathing in the middle, and it’s a start.

It’s a start, and Bucky will damn well take it without complaint.

“You’re a dream,” Steve finally blurts, gasps—all stringy and caught up in the streams of air that get in the way. “You’re a dream, it’s a dream,” Steve shakes his head, and Bucky has to grip tighter to his shoulder, stretches his hand out wider on Steve’s chest to let him know that if a dream can be this solid, this sure, then he’ll take it, he’ll fucking _take it_ , here and now, with Steve.

With Steve. Just them.

“I lost, I lost you,” Steve’s voice cracks, and it seems to invite the tide; seems to break some dam and let loose the flood: “I lost you and I failed, and I couldn’t reach and even when you were there, when I got you back, and I didn’t deserve to get you back, but you were there and it was only in my head, you’re only in my head but I didn’t even tell you, I couldn’t even tell you when you were only in my head that you’re my whole fucking heart, Bucky, you’re everything and I’ve loved you since before I can remember and you’re it, you’re it and I couldn’t tell you, God help me, I couldn’t—”

And Steve’s gasping again, all of a sudden: the air coughed up like poison, like he can’t take it in, and Bucky’s eyes go wide as Steve’s roll back.

“Steve!” he yells, as Steve goes limp, and it’s only the instincts of a soldier—and maybe more, maybe something he can’t define or describe or recall, something cold, something _red_ —but it’s only those instincts that get his arms around Steve quick enough.

Maybe not, though. Maybe it’s just the instinct he’s had—always had—to be whatever Steve needs. To keep Steve from harm at all costs.

His own pulse only steadies when he reaches for Steve’s at the neck and find it chugging away, just as it should; his own breath only calms when he feels Steve’s chest rise and fall with something like a rhythm—he’s out cold, but he’s alive.

Bucky breathes out slow, so slow: he’s _alive_.

Thank _God_.

And it’s only with that much, that essential part of all things: it’s only with that squared away that Bucky can start to parse Steve’s frantic babble, the way it seemed to take hold of him and shake him into absolute ruin—the way Steve’s heart had felt beneath his hands, the way the blue in those eyes had cut through him in a way he’d never felt before.

And then the words stand clear in his mind: 

_You’re my whole fucking heart and I’ve loved you since before I can remember and you’re it, you’re it and I couldn’t—_

“Damn it all, you idiot,” Bucky mutters under his breath as he gathers Steve up close, situates the supersoldier, the love of his goddamned life flush against his chest and bends to kiss Steve’s head as he wraps arms around him and leans into a nothing that somehow feels soft, that somehow folds around him, folds around them both so that the rush, the fear, the whole of it that stings slips away to leave the buzz of something distant, something glowing, something good.

Something so fucking _good_.

_I’ve loved you since before I can remember._

“Gorgeous fucking _oblivious_ idiot,” Bucky says against Steve’s hair, buries his face there and breathes, just breathes, and relishes the way Steve’s chest moves as he does the very same.

Relishes, and imagines—because they’re here, and it’s _them_ , and no one will know if James Buchanan Barnes is a downright sap if it’s _here_ —but he imagines, just for a second, that maybe Steve knows that the heart he’s pressed up against so tight is his, all his.

Bucky imagines it for just a second before the weight on his eyes wins out.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve thinks it’s just not right, that the dream that should have been death—that might have been death, that was more than he thought he’d get, in the end—was a hoax, that the sensation of hearing Bucky’s voice again, of no longer missing just the casual brush of Bucky’s skin: that he should lose that—it’s wrong.

It’s _wrong_.

But if that’s wrong, then this, _this_ is downright cruel, because Steve was ready for blackness and endings and the nothingness some of the boys talked about in the bunks down on the Eighth, that most of the men talked about beneath the sound of shells and screams and if Steve’s earned anything, if he _deserves_ one thing for all the things he hasn’t, doesn’t: he thinks he’s got rest, real rest eternal in the unforgiving dark.

But then there was _this_ , because taking him away once wasn’t good enough, wasn’t enough to break what’s left, and just because he’s bigger doesn’t mean he can shoulder the hurt of it any better when Bucky’s in front of him, a figment of his imagination—a dream, just a _dream_ , and damnit, Steve talks until he trips and gasps until he gives and babbles about all the things he’s kept buried deep until breathing’s not an option, except the dark that comes is just a half measure. The dark that comes still taunts him with the feeling of arms, of hands, of a steady pulse under his ear—the feeling of being small again, of being safe again, and it’s so perfect, so much like he remembers that it breaks him all the more, leaves him screwing his eyes shut all the tighter for the way those arms are familiar because he’s dreamt them before, in the softer darks, in the lighter darks: he’s dreamt them for all the things he buried.

They felt different, though, all those times before. Different from now.

But Steve’s chasing the deeper dark before he can even start to figure at the whys. 

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Truth is, Bucky doesn’t know what this is. What this means. 

He doesn’t know if this is Heaven, or Hell. If it’s a dream or reality. He doesn’t know if he’s got two arms, holding Steve close to his chest, or just the one that aims to kill. He doesn’t know if his mind’s gone, and this is where it runs. If his heart’s ready to give out on him, and this is where it stops.

He doesn’t fucking know.

Steve’s hair’s real soft, though. Whatever super-stuff stretched him tall and broad, that part didn’t change.

He knows that.

“Dumb punk,” he murmurs, low and deep and it’s nice, it’s real nice the way Steve’s head leans into Bucky’s chest, rubs his cheek against him like it’s instinct or design. And if Steve’s bigger, if Steve’s not the skinny little bastard Bucky fell for years ago with a swollen eye and a bloody nose and his fists raised nonetheless: if Steve’s a different size on the outside, it doesn’t seem to change the way he fits in Bucky’s arms, just the feel of it, just how far it reaches in Bucky’s own bones, because before, it was about survival—warmth to stop the shivering, or an extra hand to keep Steve’s blood where it belongs, or one to steady him with when the coughing hit too hard, when his heart got knocked around with the hacking: it’s different.

It’s more.

“I love you,” Bucky breathes out, watches how it rustles in that soft hair. “I fucking love you, Steven Grant Rogers,” and if he drops a kiss to Steve’s forehead, just because he can, well, Steve’s sleeping, and if it’s wrong, if Steve didn’t mean it before, all those things he said, it can just be for now.

Bucky can pretend, just for now.

Except then, Steve starts to stir, lungs heaving long and slow and full so that their flush at the chest, so that Bucky swears he can feel the pump of Steve’s blood against his ribs from the outside, except that might just be the crazy thumping of his own.

And then Steve’s speaking, and it’s only after Bucky realizes his lips, his breath is still pressed up against Steve’s brow that he notices the shape of Steve’s mouth against the center of his chest: curled upward.

Smiling, right in the middle.

“D’ya know how many times I’ve dreamed of waking up like this?” Steve half yawns against him, and Bucky wonders if this is what Steve felt like when his chest went tight and he looked like he might fall over, pulse jackhammering hard enough without Steve grinning wider, pressing those lips to the thin cotton just above the pounding.

Jesus fucking _Christ_. 

“Dreamt of you saying that,” Steve breathes out, and the eyes that flick up his way, trained on Bucky’s face through long lashes: those eyes haven’t changed a goddamned bit. “Dreamt of you meaning it.”

There’s an uptick to Steve’s tone that matches the uptick in the way he breathes, the way his pulse moves at his throat where Bucky can see it: it’s a question, and Bucky wants to flick his ear like he did when they were kids when Steve was being a moron.

He’d rather nip at that ear, and kiss that jaw on the way to it, to be fair, though.

So that’s what he does, instead.

“Must’ve left too much of the stupid with you,” he smirks against the skin of Steve’s neck, and Steve shudders with it, and this may well be the best moment of Bucky’s life, up to now; “if you didn’t catch that earlier.”

Steve turns, and they’re face to face, now, lined up against one another from tip to toes. 

“You’re one to talk,” he says against Bucky’s mouth before he leans in, and oh, nope, he was wrong: _this_ is the best moment, the best and it just gets better, what with Steve’s tongue tracing his lips, tracing his teeth, and the hard line of Steve’s body pressed against him, the tightness in his groin matched on contact, and fuck, _fuck_ —

“Fuck,” Bucky exhales, heady and hard as Steve’s hips move down against him, and it’s got no finesse, it’s got less rhythm than the way they’re panting, than the way they grasp and cling and their mouths slip, all sloppy and wrong-angled and _perfect_ against the skin, and that’s what convinces him that this can’t be just a dream, it _can’t_ be, because Steve’s either flawless, in his dreams, or he’s damn-near clueless, and this Steve is somewhere decidedly in-between, and all the more irresistible for it.

So the fact that Bucky babbles, curses a bluestreak and moans out half-thoughts that make no sense while Steve’s grinding their dicks ‘til they come in their pants, well, he doesn’t pay much attention to what slips out, to what he confesses, to the nonsense that froths up and bubbles over like a kettle on the stove, too hot, too full to contain.

“Я тебя любл—” Bucky gasps, but whatever was coming after gets swallowed in Steve’s mouth on his own, hungry and desperate with all the force of being held in for too long, and Bucky can’t think about it, can’t follow the words to an end that he knows, somehow, even though there’s no reason for knowing it, but it doesn’t really matter because there’s Steve and he tastes like the air tastes when the sun comes out after the rain.

And really, Bucky can’t ask for more than that. 

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve braces for it all to be gone, when he surfaces from the warm haze that’s tacky, slick upon his limbs, light in his chest, murmuring soft in his bones.

He braces for the way it’ll all come crashing down.

He eases his eyes open from the way they’re squinted tight, his whole frame tensed around itself like he’s thrown himself on a grenade and he’s waiting for it to blow: but he eases, slowly, when the body sprawled around him starts to quiver—starts to laugh, just slightly. 

Just enough.

Steve’s spent a good deal of time studying Bucky’s face, Bucky’s gaze: relishing it, basking in it, pretending things inside it that aren’t really there, except maybe they were—maybe they are. Steve’s spent a good deal of time and good deal more pages from every sketchpad he’s ever owned studying Bucky, and for all that, he’s damn well sure he’s never seen that face look so relaxed, so filled with joy; never seen that mouth stretched so wide in a grin that held so _much_.

“You’re here,” Steve blurts out, soft and gaping with nothing short of disbelief.

That so-wide grin gains a hint of a smirk, and _God_.

Bucky quirks a brow at him. “You’re asking that now?” 

Steve swallows, hard, and tells himself that even he can’t imagine skin this warm, muscles that strong beneath his hands. 

“Been having enough disappointment on that count,” Steve breathes out, slow, looks down and studies the way that Bucky breathes, tries to match it. “Didn’t want to kill the dream too soon.”

“Your dreams go that far?” Bucky asks. “Lucky dog, mine always cut out before the finish.” And while there’s a smile in his tone there’s sympathy, too: a softness unlike Steve remembers. A tenderness that matches, that strikes a chord in him and resonates just right along the line of feelings he’s had for so long that they’ve woven into his bones, and he thinks: maybe.

Maybe the softness was always there.

“You dreamt about this?” Steve asks it before he can stop himself, before he can think twice, because caution’s gotten him absolutely nowhere—and cowardice has only served to break his heart.

Steve dares to look up again, to meet the piercing stare that awaits him when Bucky’s breath catches, and the words that follow are all but half-heard, if more than wholly felt:

“All the time.”

“You never said anything,” Steve breathes out, eyes wide as he shakes his head, because damnit, if the time he’d spent trying to tie up all the loose bits of love he had for his best friend had been for nothing... “You never even hinted, there were always girls—”

“How was it s’posed to go, Steve?” Bucky asks, and there’s an edge there in his voice: not a threat, but an ache. “You don’t just say that sort of shit,” Bucky draws in a breath like a hiss and it cuts at Steve, something deep in him that’s more raw than it’s got any right to be. “Not if you don’t want more trouble than you can stand.”

Bucky’s voice trails off as his eyes grow darker, brighter, and they sting to look at for all the hurt they hold, but Steve can’t for the life of him look away—never wants to look away again.

Bucky’s hand is slow, in coming to rest on Steve’s cheek, in cupping the line of his jaw and drawing him in, foreheads pressed close as he tacks on the deeper feeling, the more familiar of the whys to blame for the way they both _needed_ for so damned long:

“Not if you don’t want to lose the thing that’s keeping you and killing you all at once.”

Steve’s body shakes, then, with the breath that he draws. “Goddamnit, Buck,” he murmurs, and instead of letting himself be led any closer, instead of letting himself be held by this moron he reaches to hold in kind: tight and unyielding and hellbent on keeping.

“You’re real, though,” Steve says, and now it’s less disbelief that drives the words, and far more wonder. “You came back.”

And he wants to fall apart with the relief that floods him, but when Bucky tenses in his hold, he pulls back, knows there’s no place for that, not now. Not yet.

“I was,” and Bucky’s voice is thick, strained, his face pale. “I was gone, then? It wasn’t just in my head?” he forces it out like it burns, and if the way Steve feels at seeing the agony on Bucky’s face, in his whole body, is anything to judge by then yeah: yeah, it does.

“I don’t know,” Steve tells him, honest as he can given the givens, given that nothing is sure. “I don’t know what it was. I just know I lost you and it hurt like hell,” and Steve’s voice cracks like it did when they were kids, and where Bucky used to laugh, Steve’s damn near sure they’re both closer to tears in the now. 

“Always hurts like hell,” Steves exhales, and his hand finds Bucky’s without him thinking on it twice. “I’d really like it to stop, to be honest.” Steve lifts Bucky’s knuckles to his mouth and doesn’t kiss them, so much as just breathes around their shape: “This recurring thing where I just keep losing you.”

Bucky takes the lead, then, tangling their fingers together—the splay of his palm still bigger, somehow, than Steve’s, even now.

Steve lets that be a comfort, without dwelling too much on the why.

“Where were you?” Steve whispers, because it’s a question that he knows he shouldn’t ask, except—

Bucky’s face falls, and Steve’s own heart sinks with it, but Bucky only holds onto his hand all the tighter, and so Steve grips back, and stays solid: firm.

“I don’t,” Bucky starts, shakes his head, swallows hard. “I...”

And when Bucky looks at him, really looks at him in that way he has, has always had where he’s half looking at and half looking _in_ —that way he had, that so many people missed, of being everywhere at once and stealing your breath from the inside out: when Bucky looks at him, he knows.

Steve knows that look. He remembers it. He knows where he’s seen it before.

Bucky doesn’t have to say a word for Steve’s whole being to flinch, to tense in absolute dread because no.

 _No_.

“You saved me from it, once before,” Bucky says, voice gone hoarse as his left hand reaches, pauses half-way as Bucky stares at it, horrified, unblinking, seeing something Steve can’t and it’s wrenching, it feels like ice stuck in his veins, in the parts of his heart that contract: Bucky blinks, though, and shivers hard before he makes contact with Steve’s arm, featherlight as he murmurs: “I think you’re still saving me.”

“Buck,” Steve covers Bucky’s hand with his own. “Was it, did they...” 

He can’t get it out, mostly because he can’t make himself think about it: think about where Bucky had been, what he’d looked like on that table when he’d found him, the deadness edging in around the fear in his eyes, and what if that’s what’s real, what if Bucky’s back there and hurting and Steve can’t do a damn thing.

Not a goddamned _thing_.

“I don’t know,” Bucky tells him, too wide-eyed for it to be a lie. “I can’t...it’s all blurry. Jumbled-like. Can’t make heads or tails, just that it hur…”

He trails off, but it’s too late to save the way Steve’s heart thumps with it like a punishment, like penance. Hard.

“They hurt you?” he asks, throaty and broken and hateful, rage swelling in him, though at those monsters who dared to touch Bucky—dared to touch Bucky _again_ —or at himself, the useless man that loves him like air for breathing and still lets him _hurt_ , Steve isn’t sure.

“I tried to fight. I think,” Bucky picks back up, face screwed up, trying to chase the bare end of a memory. “I kept fighting and it, they...” Bucky trails off, and something in Steve grows taut to the breaking when Bucky’s eyes glaze over and his whole bearing shifts, becomes foreign in a way that makes Steve feel cold all over until it passes, until Bucky shakes his head, shivers through the whole of his frame and comes back.

Steve thinks he wants to scream, maybe. Thinks he wants to break something; thinks he might be close to breaking, himself.

“Just made it worse,” Bucky shrugs, but his voice is frail with it, thin with what he’s holding in, holding back: half-remembering, maybe, but then it’s all the worse, if this is what’s caused by only half of what they did, what he endured. 

“Then I, they, they have me...” he gulps in air and tries, _tries_ to steady himself and it kills Steve to see him fail because God, but Bucky’s shaking with it, the unspoken terrors that Steve’s imagining only to a point, only to the point where he can swallow the bile in his throat back down because Steve knows.

Steve knows damn well what those monsters are capable of.

It takes more time than it should to realize Bucky’s gone still, and the shaking that continues between them is entirely Steve’s doing.

“Steve,” and Bucky’s hands are on his shoulders, steady and ready to take on whatever’s there to face, and he knows that Buck thinks that Steve’s the brave one, maybe now more than ever, but Steve knows that’s always been a bold-faced lie. 

“Hey, come on, it’s fine,” Bucky tells him, “I’m here now.”

And he says it with all the unswerving conviction a bare-breath of voice can hold, because he’s speaking in that small voice he’d used on Steve a hundred times, to coax his lungs to working right in the cold— _intimate_ , Steve called it in his own head, on those nights, while calling himself a fool for the thought, but now he thinks he could say it out loud, maybe, and not be quite wrong.

There are hands on his face, and the way they move against his skin is the only way Steve knows that Bucky’s brushing tears from his cheeks, and Steve can’t be ashamed, he can’t: not for this.

Not when it’s _Bucky_ that’s hurting, and _still_ telling Steve it’s okay.

“What use is it, Buck?” Steve asks, and it sticks, the words: they stick coming out, choked in his throat. “What use is all this,” he nods down to the body that’s supposed to be strong, supposed to be better, supposed to make him _enough_. “What use is it if I can’t even—”

“That’s not your job,” Bucky looks straight into his eyes, open and honest and trying to settle Steve’s rage, Steve’s rush of self-loathing.

In truth, it does the opposite.

“Like hell it’s not,” Steve damn near snarls, as riled, as indignant as he can manage, his heart in his throat as he clings to the anger, the only thing keeping him from falling apart at the seams.

“Who do you think I wanted to fight for so bad, Buck?” he asks, voice hard, but Bucky doesn’t falter: he’s unafraid, he’s committed to this, to him. ‘Til the end of the line. 

God, but Steve loves him.

“For the underdogs,” Bucky answers him, and damn, if only Steve was as good as people thinks he is, as selfless as Doctor Erskine hoped, as Bucky seems to think that he _knows_ , except, God, Steve’s anything but. 

“For justice and the common good,” Bucky carries on, and he’s so damned sure it settles heavy on Steve’s bones, makes him want to reach out and tell Bucky no, no, no—well, yes, those things, for that, but not only, not first and foremost and above all else. 

“For the better half of the human race—”

“For you,” Steve cuts him off, and if Bucky was sure, then Steve’s downright _certain_ , because it’s a law of nature, a fact of life, the marrow in his goddamned bones.

Bucky stares, gapes a little, and Steve can’t fathom how this man that he needs, _loves_ , never saw it; didn’t know. 

“You’ve spent the best part of your life making sure I was safe,” Steve says, begs him to understand, to read the deepest parts of him that words don’t fit around, that his mouth can’t quite shape to make them right, to make them known. 

He grabs for Bucky’s wrist, wraps around it, fingertip to fingertip and holds, just holds as Bucky’s mouth closes, as he swallows and meets Steve’s eyes, and oh, there’s more in those eyes than Steve deserves, and the heart that’s still in his throat makes to pump, good and hard.

“But who makes sure you’re safe, huh?” Steve asks him, soft but desperate, and it stings, just how badly he needs Bucky to _see_. “Who takes the stupid with _them_ , to keep you from using it all and getting yourself killed for it?” And Bucky chuckles, and it’s a wet sound on the edges, and it’s gorgeous. Steve thinks it’s gorgeous, and his grip on Bucky’s hand fans out, reaches wide and meets, palm to palm.

“Who’s got your six,” and he the lines on Bucky’s hand with the pad of his thumb as he breathes out the only truth that’s ever mattered, that underlain the whole of his world for so damn long: “when you matter most out of any of them?”

And when he looks at Bucky, when he meets Bucky’s eyes straight on, it only lasts a minute.

It only lasts a minute, because then Bucky’s got his mouth on Steve’s and the heart in Steve’s throat settles back to his chest before it starts to race once more, but for all the _right_ reasons.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


“What if it takes you again?”

Steve’s voice is small through the chest that Bucky’s propped against, and it’s still strange, still a marvel the way the words sound the same, but the beat beneath his ear is steady where it used to falter, used to flirt with failing more often than not.

Bucky closes his eyes and lets it all sink it for just a second, lets the fear at the bottom of Steve’s words settle and fade just a little, so that it’s bearable, before he breathes in deep.

“It?”

He doesn’t get a response, to that; doesn’t get an explanation, and that’s worse, Bucky thinks, because it means that neither one of them is sure, and yes, Bucky will follow Steve blind no matter what, but it would be nice.

It would be nice if one of them knew where they hell they were going.

“Promise me you’ll come back,” Steve whispers, demands, half-begs, and it’s all jumbled as Steve ducks his head against Bucky’s. “Whatever it takes, promise you’ll…”

He trails off, and even though Bucky’s the one who’s crushed against him, it seems like maybe Steve’s the one who needs the comfort more. 

“Promise me I’ll never have to find you like this again,” Bucky counters, nodding toward their surroundings: still sprawled on the ground where Bucky’d found Steve a gasping, shivering mess as soon as he’d woken back to the here and the now; to the blues and greys, the whites and blacks over the reds. “Promise me I’ll never have to wonder whether you’re gonna be warm or cold when I reach out to touch.”

Steve grabs the very hand that Bucky’d reach with, the closest—his left hand, and that’s significant for reasons that Bucky can’t quite figure, but he reaches, and he presses open lips to the center of Bucky’s palm, and maybe they don’t need to know where they’re going.

Maybe just going _together_ is enough.

————————————————————————————————

Steve doesn’t think about how the sketchbook appears. Or the sofa. Or the bed.

Steve thinks instead about the way Bucky’s body is splayed across said bed, leisurely and relaxed with his head in Steve’s lap, eyes closed and breath steady. Steve thinks about how his gaze can just roam across the smooth planes of skin, the tone of muscle as it coils and moves. Steve thinks how his fingers around the pencil in his hand will take up the graphite from his drawing, could paint new marks on Bucky’s skin when he’s done, dark grey next to where he’ll suck bright red into the flesh.

Bucky’s eyes start to shift, start to ease open, and he meets Steve’s stare with a question quirking his brow.

“Do you mind?” Steve asks, raising his sketchbook indicatively. Bucky grins, exhales slow and settles back, eyes drifting again.

He’s never minded.

“S’long as you pay the worker when you’re done,” Bucky murmurs, languid and deep, husky from his nap. “It’s hard work sitting here, looking pretty.”

Steve snorts, and gets back to his sketch, shading the contours of Bucky’s chest.

When Steve’s gaze shifts back to Bucky’s face, though, Bucky’s eyes are as focused on Steve as Steve’s have ever been on him.

Heated, though. Bucky’s gaze makes Steve’s blood race, all friction and flame.

“You could finish that later,” Bucky damn well near _purrs_ , and Steve has to fight down the shiver that wants to follow, that’s got nothing to do with a chill.

“Could finish it now,” Steve answers, voice tight, more because he knows if he doesn’t finish now, he certainly won’t later. _After_.

“S’my dream,” Bucky pouts out on a breath, eyes fluttering as the chest Steve’d been studying heaves up, then down, and yes, Steve wants to run his hands over the real thing instead of the version on the page. Steve wants to run his tongue over the real thing.

But he’s almost _done_.

So he bites his bottom lip and leans in, and Bucky’s eyes grow wide with want as Steve leans toward his torso, only to earn a yelp in response to the tweak he delivers Bucky’s right nipple.

“You were saying?” Steve smirks, but it fades when he sees Bucky’s eyes: still wide, but there’s no heat.

Something’s wrong.

Steve puts the sketchpad down and crawls closer when Bucky shoots up, sitting stock-straight and staring at his hands. 

“I wanted you to finish it later,” he tells his upturned palms as Steve reaches out to grab them in his own.

“No, I got that,” Steve nods, says it gentle. “And I can, I mean, just, what’s up?”

“No, it’s not,” Bucky starts, and his eyes are full of something Steve can’t put a finger on, save that it’s wild and it’s strong in Bucky’s gaze. “If it was a dream, you’d,” and Bucky’s hands in his own are slowly curling around his fingers, grasping back as he speaks: “You’d have done what I wanted,” he says slowly, softly. “‘Cause it’s _my_ dream.”

And Steve may be a bit slow, now and again, but this time he hears all the things unsaid in what Bucky _does_ say.

“Buck…” he trails off, suddenly more breathless than when he’d been thinking too hard about Bucky’s chest against his mouth.

“You’re not a dream,” Bucky exhales, and it’s _You’re not just in my head and the things you’ve said and the feel of you and the taste of your mouth aren’t just real because I want them to be, they’re not just the words I want to hear and the hopes I used to tamp down as best I could: you’re real_, it’s all the latent fears of _not true_ that they’d both been ignoring, both been setting aside for the greater fear of being _gone, not here_, and Steve’s chest bursts with the things he sees, recognizes as Bucky’s eyes glow with them all, feels the very same things burning bright just the same in his mind, close against his heart, and it’s more, it’s so much more than he can stand.

So he doesn’t try to stand it. He leans in, meets Bucky halfway, and shares the weight of it, the warmth of it, between their mouths, between their hands. 

And he doesn’t even notice the play of black and red on Bucky’s skin for the suck of his mouth, the trail of his dust-coated hands—he’s too busy with the taste of a mouth that’s not just imagined. He’s too busy nipping at the line of a neck that’s solid, around the swell of a pulse that signals real _life_.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve’s curled up around Bucky’s middle, afterward; once the sweat between them’s dried, even if the sheets are still a mess. Bucky’s hands are carding through his hair, and it feels like home should feel, Steve thinks.

Home should feel just like this.

“If it’s not a dream,” Bucky says, and Steve hears it more through his ribs than through the air around them; “then what is it?”

Steve cracks his neck and presses lips to Bucky’s sternum before he settles back in, presses close.

“Beats me,” he breathes. “Not sure I care, to be honest.”

And he doesn’t, hasn’t, can’t. 

Bucky’s fingers on his scalp are really something else.

“Does that mean that,” Bucky swallows, and Steve feels it travel down the line of his bones. “The things I, that they made me...”

And Steve hears it, when Bucky’s lungs deflate too sharply; when his heart starts pumping too hard.

“Is that the nightmare?”

Steve just turns, lays his own body over Bucky’s, top to bottom, and kisses him like the ship’s sinking and he wants to spend the last of his air on this, on him.

On him alone.

Steve hopes that’s all the answer he needs, because it’s all Steve’s got to give him.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


“Sometimes, I thought about giving you a ring.”

Bucky doesn’t mean for the words to come out, just then. He doesn’t mean for them to come out like that.

But as it is, Steve’s hand is stretched out on his hip, and Bucky can’t help but reach down to trace the fingers: strong lines, and smart, and skilled, and the words are just there on his tongue and they taste like Steve tastes, and somehow, he can’t help but let them out.

“Not doing it, o’course,” Bucky meanders on when Steve says nothing. “I mean, can you even imagine how that would’ve gone over…” He pauses, realizes he’s been circling Steve’s ring finger without thinking on it, without meaning to. 

He can see it, though. He can imagine the line of it, the weight of it, the golden gleam of it against that golden skin.

“But I thought about it,” Bucky forces out, forces himself to finish if he can’t quite force himself to look up, to meet Steve’s eyes. “The idea of it. I,” Bucky swallows, and Steve’s hand turns in his own, brings their fingertips together and drags them upward.

Steve’s lips brush against his knuckles, his tongue sneaking out against his wrist, and Bucky breathes it soft, now: “I thought about that a lot.”

“I thought about how warm you felt,” Steve tells the flesh of his shoulder, cupping Bucky’s hand to his cheek as Steve leans to mouth at the crook of Bucky’s arm, breathing deep in the crevasse of skin. “Even when you weren’t there with me, I…”

Steve’s voice falters, and he buries that soft, sandy hair against Bucky’s chest for an instant as he steadies, and Bucky thinks there may be nothing better in the whole goddamned world than to be the place, the person that sets _this man_ to rights.

“Buck,” Steve manages, after a moment, to say his name with less of a tremble and all of the feeling. “I swear to God that’s saved me in the cold more than once, just thinking of you,” and Steve’s hold on him tightens, just a tad. 

“Like this,” and Steve leans into the hand of Bucky’s that’s held against his jaw, cradling his neck, and Steve presses into the line of Bucky’s arm against his chest like he can melt into it, become one with it, always and forever.

‘Til the end of the goddamned line.

And Bucky, for all that he _wants_ , feels better, damn-near blissful for the fact of Steve’s arms around him, for this impossible moment where there isn’t a ring on the hand that touches him like he’s worth something true.

In a dream, he knows: there’d be a ring.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


“I’ve got a bad feeling.”

Bucky groans—he’d been teetering on the edge of sleep, sprawled against Steve’s frame, just under where Steve was balancing his sketchbook and drawing whatever caught his eye tonight, maybe Bucky’s fingernails, and that brings a grin to Bucky’s face but it doesn’t last, because he’d been _on the edge of sleep_ , damnit, and if there’s a thing that continues to help convince him that this place, this time with Steve is real, is more than a dream—or more than any dream he’s ever known, ever thought could hold fast—if anything helps to lean him closer to _sure_ , it’s the fact that he absolutely can, and does, fall asleep.

Usually wrapped up in one Steve Rogers. Which is a dream of a whole other sort.

“Shut it, punk,” Bucky grunts as he tries his best to burrow into Steve’s midsection to find some shred of restfulness lingering in the lines of his abs. 

“Buck, I’m serious.”

“So’m I,” Bucky grits out, taking a moment to mourn the loss of his good night’s sleep. “Got any idea how much _less_ comfortable you are when you’re all tense?” he knocks the back of his head just below Steve’s ribs for emphasis. “S’like sleeping on a slab o’ rock, man.”

Steve doesn’t move, though—doesn’t so much as breathe in, so Bucky takes his own cue to breathe out, slow, and turn to face Steve where his eyes are far and blank, and his muscles are too goddamned tight, from his arms to his thighs, to the corners of his lips.

“Steve,” Bucky draws out the name, and Steve—Steve, for all of the muscle and the height and the healthy look of his skin: Steve looks up at him, and he’s ninety pounds of pointy bones, more heart in him than flesh, and he’s being brave when his nervous stomach—and on the worst days, the long nights, his nervous heart—wants nothing more than to betray his scrawny frame. 

“Stevie, come on,” Bucky puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve doesn’t pull back but he doesn’t relax, won’t raise his head. 

“Look at me,” Bucky cajoles, just like he used to when Steve was pale as a ghost and was too lost to the coughing, or the shaking: he rubs his finger into a stronger line of bone and grips firm, except now: _now_ , he can do what he always wanted to do back then, and that’s dip his own head and bring their mouths together, use his lips to coax Steve up to him.

“You gotta know,” Bucky breathes into Steve’s mouth. “There ain’t nowhere I can go that’ll keep me from coming back, okay?” And when Steve breathes back in little more than a whimper, Bucky swallows it, takes it in and draws Steve closer, takes his tongue to trace the words into that fucking gorgeous mouth.

“There ain’t a single place in the world better than this, alright?” he closes his lips around Steve’s lower one, sucks for just a second like a promise, and tries to latch onto the laugh that escapes Steve’s body, less than to the way it sounds so sad.

“A weird crystal death cave?” Steve asks him, just a bit desperate, and Bucky’s grin is tight as he puts both hands on Steve’s shoulders, now, and settles him back, lays him flat so that Bucky can lean against him, atop him, around him, so fucking warm as he leads Steve’s arms around him—and Steve takes the hint, doesn’t need to be coaxed toward holding Bucky close.

“A place where my head can fit like this against you,” Bucky tells him, because the whys and the wheres and the what-the-fucking- _hells_ don’t seem to matter so much, when they’re like this. “Just so.”

Bucky feels it, as Steve swallows hard, as his breathing evens out. 

“Right,” Steve exhales, steadier now, and Bucky’s grin is loose, now, as he turns his face to press his lips to Steve’s neck.

“Mmm, ‘sactly,” he breathes there for a minute, before settling back down. “Now, sleep, Rogers. I mean it.” 

He bats at Steve’s chest lightly, and Steve chuckles with less of an edge, less of a sob in it, this time.

  


————————————————————————————————

Steve wakes to the greys and the whites and the blues, and where his mouth was buried into Bucky’s hair when he fell asleep, his lips are cool now against a whole lot of nothing, and he curses the sun and the moon and the sky for all that he can’t see them, here, because he knew it.

Steve _knew_ he’d been right to worry.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


He fights, at first. 

They force a splint between his teeth: he bites at their fingers until he tastes blood.

They poke at him, stab him full of needles: he tenses, flinches at just the right time so that they rip the flesh, blowing the vein.

They call him an “asset”: he hocks back and spits in their faces.

There is a hard slab of metal at his back: he grits his teeth and thinks _muscles, tension, Steve_.

There is heat, burning: he bites down on his tongue and forces the train of thought— _friction, gasping, Steve._

There is metal, where there should be flesh: he gags against his own breathing, his own beating heart and he makes himself focus on what matters, what needs to stay as they rip, as they take the metal hand that’s _not his hand_ and make it tear at all the things that make up James Buchanan Barnes—he makes himself think of Steve. Of Steve.

Only of _Steve_.

There is burning, the stench of it—burning flesh, and the metal arm is attached to his body and it’s poised and it’s aimed and he _knows_ : but he fights, he _fights_.

Bucky fights the urge to vomit.

It all goes black before he knows whether or not he succeeds.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Bucky comes back to himself—and there’s a self, a fucking _self_ to come back to, and that’s all he was trying for, all he was hoping for, there’s a _him_ he can point at and say _Yes, that’s Bucky Barnes_ ; but he comes back to himself bit by bit: feels his limbs, feels his breath, feels arms that he knows draped around him.

 _Steve_.

“You with me, Buck?” And Steve’s voice has never sounded sweeter, no matter that it’s hoarse and it trembles and it’s so full of hurting that it overflows with it, drenches Bucky in it like ice water or cold blood: doesn’t matter.

He makes a noise in his throat that he hopes is enough, and he starts shaking in Steve’s grasp—again, maybe, he might start shaking again—but Steve just holds to him, and Bucky doesn’t fear for letting go.

Steve’s whispering things that Bucky doesn’t hear so much as absorb, less of the meaning and more of the feeling: Steve’s whispering and rubbing at his arms as if to warm him, as if to make sure Bucky’s still there, but what Bucky knows is that sometimes there’s pressure, light pressure and heat against the top of his head, and above all else he feels safe.

Feels loved.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, how much of that feeling he needs before the words slip out without him thinking on them too hard.

“Do you think it’s real?” Bucky asks, voice like gravel, for all the broken parts.

Steve’s mouth moves against the sweaty strands of his hair. “Do you think _this_ is real?”

And Bucky feels Steve’s hand close around his own, feels Steve’s heartbeat against his head, and the answer should be easy, with that, like this.

But his lungs still sting from smoke. His hands still feel heavy with someone else’s blood.

“Could they both be?” he asks, and it comes out too damned desperate, too damned true. “Somehow?”

Steve is quiet, around him, for a moment, and Bucky tries to ground himself here, in this, in _them_.

“I dunno,” Steve finally whispers. “Damnit, Buck, but I,” he ducks his head against Bucky’s hair again and breathes, breathes, breathes.

“I don’t know.”

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve loses Bucky three more times before they really speak about it, before they have a chance to really speak about anything.

The first time, it’s straight from his arms; the second, it’s upon seeing, finding him curled in upon himself, staring at his hands, and Steve doesn’t even get to reach him, get to touch him, before he’s gone again. Steve wonders, maybe, if that one was in his head, but he thinks his mind must hate him to go through the trouble of making up something that terrible, that wrenching in his chest, in his gut.

His mind may very well hate him, these days.

The third time, Bucky is in front of him, on the verge of collapse, and it’s all Steve can do to hold him up, hold him steady, even as Bucky’s mouth latches onto him, kissing and nipping, hands roaming without any plan or purpose save to _feel_ , and Steve pulls back, asks him if he’s all right, asks him if he’s sure, but Bucky just keeps shaking through his grasping, his clutching at Steve and the way he moves against him, desperate, and Steve tries to right him, tries to pull back when Bucky whimpers every time he breaks his mouth from Steve’s skin, but Bucky refuses it, Bucky won’t stand for it, so Steve gives: more than just the physical, Steve gives presence, Steve promises Bucky that he’s safe, that he’s home, and by God, that he’s loved, and he soothes him, he meets him, he eases but doesn’t dare, doesn’t dream to push until Bucky’s entirely spent, until Bucky collapses atop of him and shivers until sleep takes him: unrestful, the kind of exhaustion that bleeds from the pores.

And it leaves Steve hollow, it leaves Steve filled with acid and longing and what parts of himself that are left and only coming undone, slowly being eaten away as Bucky barely breathes, barely shifts, barely _lives_ , it seems, against his chest, so still that Steve has to reach out and seek his pulse every so often, just to be sure.

Just to make _sure_.

It lands them here, though, chest to chest when Bucky crawls back up to consciousness, eyes meeting just to pull away, and Steve wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to cover Bucky with his body and start returning the favor of keeping _him_ safe, for once, because for all the Bucky’s saved him from, Steve had never had to face a thing like _this_.

“What if,” Bucky starts, and it’s unhinged, the way the syllables clack and groan against each other, like talking at all is just too much. “What if I’m, what if I...”

And God, _God_ , Steve would take his place in a heartbeat.

“Steve, the me there,” Bucky blanches, shakes his head as his voice goes timid, thin: terrified within an inch of an end of some kind.

“He’s a monster,” Bucky gasps out, eyes impossibly wide, and suddenly, they’re trained on Steve, they’re fixed on Steve and Steve alone and they’re swallowing him whole: “ _I’m_ a monster.”

Steve’s jaw clenches and his hands are quick, framing Bucky’s face as he says, as firm as he can, brooking no argument: “Don’t you ever let me hear those words from your mouth again, James Barnes,” because no. No.

Not his Bucky. Not _ever_.

Fuck, but Steve would _give_ his heart to take Bucky’s place. Steve would die on the spot, just to spare him this hurt.

Bucky blinks a few times, and his pupils go back to something closer to normal, his chest stops heaving so damned hard, and he gives a smile that comes out a grimace, but it’s something.

“You sound like my mama,” Bucky says, toneless, but Steve’ll take it as a boon.

“Your mama was a smart lady,” Steve says with warmth and conviction and the soft brush of his fingers back and forth along Bucky’s cheeks. “I couldn’t ever figure out where all your stupid came from, when you had a woman like her raising you up.”

Bucky laughs, just a little—too breathless, but it’s a laugh.

They’re quiet, then, for a time, because the laugh is nice even when it’s shaky, and Steve knows it won’t last.

They both know it won’t last. So they cherish what they can. 

“What if it is real, Steve?” Bucky whispers, afraid of the thought, of speaking it into truth by mistake. “What I am, there. What I do.”

And it isn’t as if Steve can’t see it, can’t envision the whole of it for less or more than what it is when he closes his eyes and gives in to his own hateful imagination, his own fears and guilt and shame. It’s not like Steve has played it over and over, the scenarios, the possibilities, the things that could be happening to take Bucky from him, to bring him back like _this_.

And Steve knows nightmares, by now; Steve knows nightmares like the creases of his own hand.

This is something more.

“We’ll cross that bridge when it comes to us,” Steve says; curses the way he doesn’t remember to say _if_ , rather than _when_ , and he doesn’t miss the way the skin around Bucky’s eyes tighten for the slip; he doesn’t miss it.

But that’s not the point.

He takes Bucky’s hands in his own, and curses the way that they shiver as he brings them up, kisses the pulse points at the wrist, the centerpoints of each palm and holds, just holds: because _that’s_ the point. 

“There’s nothing you can do to keep me from walking with you, Buck,” he breathes there, steady, and waits until Bucky’s breaths match his own, keeps time just the same.

Because that is _absolutely_ the point. 

“When I said I’d be there ‘til the end of the line, there weren’t any strings attached to that thing,” Steve tells him, and it feels a bit like a confession—feels a bit like a deathbed revelation, and it twists in his chest as he chokes around the words, the words and what they _mean_ , deeper down, just as thick.

“You’re my everything,” he breathes out, and it comes out heavy—rightly so—and Steve leans to press his forehead against Bucky’s, to breathe the air he lets go. “And I know you, and you’re no monster. There is no part of you that could ever be that.”

And Steve’s so close, he’s so fucking close, and his lips trace the lines of Bucky’s cheekbones, and he feels something snap at the core of him when Bucky shudders into the touch, and fuck, _fuck_ , Steve cannot bear this.

Steve can’t bear anything less than Bucky: living, and breathing, and warm, and _his_ , but God, just…

God _Almighty_ , why does it have to hurt like this?

“And if it’s real,” Steve steels himself to say it, all of it, to lay his cards on the table and make it plain as day for this man who is the soul of him, the whole of his reason for trying to stand any of it, for not lying down and calling quits because it’s over, it’s over, they’ve done their part, he’s sacrificed more than he can stand, but for Bucky—

For Bucky, there’s nothing he wouldn’t give, wouldn’t do.

It’s Bucky, or no one. It’s Bucky, or nothing at all.

“If it’s real, then let me tell you this,” Steve starts again, and his voice is harsh, now, sharp with the gravity of this, of _them_.

“You do whatever you have to, to survive,” Steve tells him, stoic and solemn and true. “You do whatever it takes to come back, whatever it takes to get back here, wherever this is,” and Steve swallows, looks down at Bucky’s hands in his own as his tone dips lower; deeper.

“And if that makes me a monster, then so be it.” And Bucky’s eyes flick up, just then, wide now with something else, something disbelieving and sheer, and Steve takes from that look what he wants, what he needs to believe it means and feeds from it, makes it fuel what has to follow, what needs to come if they’re going to make it out alive.

“Because I need you, Buck. I need you.” Steve leans in until the tips of their noses touch; Steve closes his eyes there and stays, just stays. “I need you to not get so lost there that you can’t find your way home.”

Bucky’s mouth works around something stiff and huge, something that’s too much for him, and whether it’s a promise, or a reassurance, or a sob or a scream or a breath that hurts too deep, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, because Steve can be what Bucky’s always been. Steve can be the rock, as much as he’s working toward crumbling on his own.

Steve can be the rock that Bucky needs. Steve can build his foothold, keep him steady in the storm.

Steve can do that.

“You know what Erskine made me promise, before?” Steve asks, and Bucky doesn’t nod, or shake his head: he blinks, and a single tear trails down his cheek.

That single tear might just be what breaks Steve more than anything else.

“He made me promise that I’d stay who I was,” Steve whispers, slowly traces the muscles, the tendons on either side of Bucky’s neck, massaging at the jackhammer of Bucky’s pulse below the jaw. “No matter what happened, that was the thing that mattered most.”

“Not being a perfect soldier,” Steve breathes out, maintaining eye contact and keeping close: “but staying a good _man_.”

Bucky doesn’t so much as twitch: he stares at Steve, lips only just parted, and seems to hang on every word—every word, or none of them, and it terrifies Steve, the way he can’t quite tell if Bucky’s wholly there with him, or not there at all.

“To remember,” Steve forges on, because that’s what he does: because this is Bucky and that’s what he _does_. 

“To remember what was in here,” Steve presses a hand to Bucky’s chest, to Bucky’s heart, and that’s what Steve does, for better or worse: “What’s in here, above all else.”

For better or worse, Steve follows his heart.

Even when his heart’s all tangled up in the chest of his best friend, his whole universe, and that friend, that world, that heart is shaking like a leaf—even then.

Maybe then most of all.

“I tried, Steve,” Bucky bursts out with it, trembling. “I fought, I tried to fight better this time, harder, but, they, it was, they,” and his eyes are saucers, again: they’re wide, cornered and frightened and wild, and Steve’s chest twists with it as Bucky gasps, as Bucky’s chest heaves so fast, with such forces that the hand Steve’s got placed in the center of it starts flailing for the torrent. 

“Then stop,” Steve presses back, keeps a hold over the thrashing that’s got to hurt against Bucky’s ribs, tries to steady him and slow his blood, stay his fear as Steve gives the answer, the only answer to this: “Just stop.”

Bucky stares at him, open mouthed now, fully so, and Steve doesn’t like it, doesn’t like seeing Bucky so uncertain, so lost, floundering.

He can’t take it, so he fashions out an anchor, makes it clear as day and begs the universe, begs God and the Devil themselves that it holds, and that Buck will take it, grasp it, and save Steve one more time by letting _himself_ be saved, if only in parts, if only just.

“Don’t fight them, Buck,” and it comes out more like a plea than Steve had wanted, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, not now, just Bucky. Just Bucky, and keeping him intact. “If it hurts, if they just dig deeper, if they just try to take more and it doesn’t do any good, you’ve gotta stop, because I can’t, there’s nothing...” 

Steve breathes in, sharp, because there’s something heavy and harsh that’s building in his throat, behind his eyes, and he doesn’t think he’ll manage if he lets it loose, lets it run free.

“I’m useless,” Steve gasps, grits out because it’s true, it’s _true_ , goddamnit, and it cuts in ways he can’t hold in. “I’m useless here, there’s nothing I can do except be so fucking selfish,” Steve shakes his head when Bucky makes a noise, something that hedges toward a protest but it can’t come, it can’t, because this is Steve’s weakness, this is what Erskine didn’t plan for, this is why he isn’t what they think he is, what they thought he was, and couldn’t be, wouldn’t be, would never try or want to be because to be what they saw would be to sacrifice what makes him, would be to lose what he loves.

Steve Rogers is _selfish_ , so very selfish, when it comes to love.

“I’m useless, except to tell you to stop fighting and keep this, keep _you_ safe,” and his hand grips at Bucky’s shirt, splays on Bucky’s chest where the pulse flutters, crazed and confused but _there_.

“Don’t let them hollow this out,” Steve begs, and leans in to press his lips where his fingers leave space, hot against Bucky’s rising chest. “Please,” he murmurs, waits through the pump of a few frantic beats, soaking them in. “Whatever it takes, however far you have to hide it, keep this,” and he grabs for Bucky’s hand, layers it atop his own and covers it on both sides with the free hand he’s got left, pressing them together, just above that heart.

“Keep _us_ ,” he breathes, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he could swear Bucky’s heart there thumps with a particular force, like it’s willing to fight a new battle, to play the long game to win a bigger war.

The only war that matters, anymore.

“The world can’t lose you, James Barnes,” Steve whispers to the hollow of Bucky’s throat, earnest and breaking and only able to shore the cracks with the fact that Bucky’s breathing’s slowed, the fact that his heartbeat is heavy and rapid but strong before he gasps, chokes on the places where his very selfhood’s starting to fray around the truth of all this, the heart:

“ _I_ can’t lose you.”

And Bucky doesn’t speak, not yet, but that heart thumps hard again, and the line of his mouth grows tight at the corners, and he threads his fingers into Steve’s as best he can, and it feels right.

Against all the _wrong_ , it feels like a _godsend_.

“Whatever it takes,” Steve breathes out, soft: “for me, will you try?”

Bucky’s throat works around a swallow for a good long time before any sound follows the moving of his lips, but it comes.

“I,” Bucky croaks, flinches at the sound that comes or the ones that don’t, Steve’s not sure which.

“They make me do horrible things, Steve,” Bucky tells him, eyes shaking, unfocused, and he gasps around the details that don’t make themselves known in words—that don’t have to, not to be heard and felt and seen all the same. 

“Unspeakable things,” Bucky whispers, and his whole body spasm right through his spine. “Unforgivable things.”

“Look at me,” Steve asks it, straight and stern but needy, and Bucky does, he looks, and damnit, Steve can’t keep on like this, watching this, doing nothing to _stop_ the look in those eyes, all that hatred pointed inward where there are only things to be loved.

“Listen to yourself, Buck,” Steve tells him, asks it of him. “They _make_ you. You can’t stop them. _They’ve_ done unspeakable things, unforgivable things. _They_ do the horrible things, and they’re too big of cowards to even let that blood spill on their own hands,” and Steve’s getting angry, now, Steve’s taking the ache in his chest and turning it into rage, turning it into fire in his veins.

“They have to try to break you, so they do horrible things _through_ you,” and he takes Bucky’s hands, tries to will the truth of this into the digits, into the limbs so that his blood will pump it through him until they both bleed out, until they both run dry.

Bucky jaw is clenched, and he’s torn, Steve can see it, Steve can see it and he wants to scream, but Bucky’s the stronger of them, always was, always would be, and Steve was always smaller, Steve was always the one who had to find ways around the rules, the strict ideas of how the world worked that didn’t apply to someone like him, and the fact is, Steve never claimed to be a better man than anyone else.

It was bullies that Steve took issue with. Always had been.

Bucky, though.

Bucky’d always been a better man.

“I can’t just lie down and roll over while they murder innocent—” he starts, but Steve stops him, has to stop him.

“I know,” Steve says, because damnit, he does, and Bucky’s not the only victim here, Bucky’s not the only one who’s hurt, Steve knows that, and Steve’s sick thinking on it. “I know, but what good’s the alternative doing?”

Bucky’s not the only one who’s hurt, but he is the one Steve will put first. Every time.

“You’re a good man,” Steve tells him, says it out loud because after all this time, Bucky seems to need to hear it. “You’re the best man I know—”

“I’m a killer,” Bucky snaps, less at Steve than at the universe, than at himself, but it cuts through Steve like hot butter with a knife, so raw that when he speaks, it’s all over his tone, his words, the way it cracks and breaks and bursts forth:

“You’re my whole goddamned _world_.” 

Bucky is silent, at that, and while it takes time, a long time, the tension starts to give way from Bucky’s body, and if the tangled limbs, the emptiness, the total disarray that’s left in its place breaks Steve’s heart all over again, well—it’s still better.

It’s still better than the alternative.

“Look who’s a sap,” Bucky tries for humor, but falls far short.

Steve shrugs, leans in to press lips to the corner of Bucky’s mouth as he murmurs there: 

“Maybe. But Buck, I can’t watch you hurting like this.” Steve shakes his head, and fights back the heavy weight in his throat, in his chest, behind his eyes, pushing forward, demanding say. “I _can’t_ —”

And when his voice cracks, he has to bite his lip against the way he wants to cry out in anger, in anguish: against the way that Bucky’s broken in his arms, not in body but in mind and he can’t do a damned thing save to touch him, to hold him—to remind him that he’s not alone, that he’ll never be alone. 

“You’re the best, and the,” Steve falters, but he squeezes at Bucky’s hands so he knows, so he _knows_ how much Steve means it. “You’re the best and bravest man I know.”

“Says Captain America himself,” Bucky half-scoffs, miserable, and Steve can’t stand it; he can’t _stand_ it.

“Where do you think I learned it from?” Steve damn well hisses through the clench of his jaw; damn near moans for how this hurts too _much_. “Who do you think I thought of in that chamber as my body tore itself apart and got rebuilt from the ground up? Who was I hoping like hell’d get etched in whatever super-genes where there by the end of it?”

Steve’s breathing heavy with it, with all of it, with the fact that he’s said it and the fact that it’s true, and he can feel Bucky’s gaze on him, can feel it before Bucky speaks.

“Stevie—”

“Don’t let them take you,” Steve cuts him off, sharp, because this is important, this is the only important thing. “Don’t let them take this.”

And Steve takes Bucky’s hands and twines them around his body, leads Bucky to take Steve in his arms, brings Bucky’s palms to rest upon his chest and hold: hold.

“Come back,” Steve folds in on himself and begs it, demands like a child and he’s not proud of it, he’s not proud but Bucky’s warm against his back, and Bucky grips him all the closer, all the tighter, lets him grasp at the fleeing bits of his composure and rebuild, because he’s always built himself in line with Bucky, always shaped his soul to Bucky’s give. 

“No matter how far you have to run to keep yourself safe from whatever they do, please,” and it’s less shaky, now, more certain, more of a genuine thing that he asks, that he _needs_ , than a foundering grasp at the night. “ _Please_ , just make sure there’s something left that can come back to me.”

Bucky’s hand is wide, still against Steve’s chest as they sit, as the words curl around them and the curl around each other, breathing heavy, keeping small.

“They’ll break me,” Bucky breathes into the crook of Steve’s neck, damp and hot and hollow. “They’ll break every part of me that they can find.”

“Then you don’t let them find you,” Steve counters, and it comes out with a certitude he’s not sure he can back. “You go wherever you need to, you hide as deep as you can. And whatever parts break, we’ll put them back together.”

Steve grasps at Bucky’s hands and turns, faces him to make the one promise he’d break all the others just to keep.

“I’ll put you together, Buck,” he breathes it, swears it. “I’ll always put you back together.”

“What if I go too far?” Bucky whispers, looks up through his lashes, looks like he used to when he thought Steve was too lost to the fever to see the fear in his eyes. “What if I can’t even find myself anymore? What if I…” and Bucky’s eyes are the brightest they’ve ever been, just then, the most overcome and all-consuming; the most unbearable and essential thing Steve’s ever felt.

“What if I can’t find _you_?”

Steve cups Bucky’s face and leans in close.

“There’s not a power in Heaven or on Earth that could stop me from looking for you, from finding you,” he exhales with a force that maybe, just maybe, makes the universe fall into line. “If I know you’re there, if there’s even a chance in Hell, I will never stop.”

And Bucky looks dubious, doubtful, hesitant, and Steve’s about to swear by everything he knows when Bucky breathes:

“What if,” he starts, and his voice—Bucky’s voice should _never_ be that small. 

“What if what’s left of me isn’t worth looking for?” he finally manages, finally gets the words out. “What if whatever I become in the meantime isn’t worth saving?”

And Steve can’t help the horror as he gapes, can’t help the dread that fills him, the absolute disgust, he can’t, because the thought of it, the mere _idea_ of it makes his stomach churn, makes him feel like his lungs are trying to end him, makes him hurt where he didn’t think he knew how to hurt.

But if he can’t help the horror, then just as sure: he cannot help the way the truth comes out—solid and leaden and gleaming and fierce:

“You’re the _only_ thing worth saving.” 

And between them, when their lips meets, there’s only fear on the surface, but Steve’s ready to kiss Bucky, sound and sure and desperate, until something sweeter comes to the fore.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


The thing is, Bucky’s always been a fighter. 

So it’s hard, it goes against every instinct he has when he wakes, when he opens his eyes to cold and dark and the tang of blood: it’s hard to do anything but scream, anything but rail against the restraints on his limbs as they loosen, cell by cell; it’s hard to do anything less than throw the whole of his body weight against the hands that hold him down, against the wires that stick out from needles in his skin—it’s a downright trial, to lie there and do nothing, because maybe it’s an uphill climb, maybe it’s a losing battle, except Bucky’d kept Steve breathing through more blizzards than he could count: he likes his odds well enough.

But for Steve. For _Steve_.

For Steve, he will try.

So when they push, he doesn’t push back. When they cut, he doesn’t lash out. When they force, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even keep firm, doesn’t even stand his ground.

He gives. He turns. He runs. He hides.

It tastes bitter, it feels _wrong_ , but for Steve.

For Steve, he _tries_.

Because it was never about the fighting itself, really.

It was about what— _who_ —he was fighting _for_.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve used to know things.

Steve used to know things like how to balance crates just so, so that he could climb to reach the top shelves in the kitchen.

Steve used to know how to hold any scrap of metal like a shield with two hands, instead of one.

Steve used to know how to pace himself, to accept limitations, to look at defeat from all sides to see what it was made of, to find its weak spots, to make it yield—like he did, like he had to—given time.

Steve used to know what patience was.

So it’s a slow process, rediscovering the parts of himself he didn’t realize he’d let fall to the wayside: the parts of him that remember what being small meant, what delicate bones could and couldn’t stand.

It’s a slow process, remembering that even if the serum made the chambers and the rhythm and the beating in him strong, it didn’t do anything to touch the _heart_ of him. 

And the time it takes is bitter, brutal. He throws his unbreakable body against surfaces, wanting to see something shatter, wanting to watch with his eyes what’s happening inside his chest. He curls up and tries to remember the scent of soap from the clinic on his mother’s skin, the feel of being small enough to disappear if he just thought on it long enough, hard enough. He repeats his name, his rank, his service number because it feels like no less than he deserves, because it feels like all of this is his fault, and it all comes back to Bucky on that table the first time, eyes wide and wild and _wrong_ , and if Steve had been worth his salt from the beginning, he’d have been there to stop it.

It takes time.

But after the time’s taken, Steve remembers what he used to know. Steve remembers what it’s like to wait for what he wants, what he needs. Steve remembers _how_ to weather the in-between, to breathe deep and slow and steady, to close his eyes and picture what he knows, what he keeps close to his chest and fights to hold there, endless: to picture what the future has to hold, what it will hold, if he just tries. If he just waits.

He thinks of Bucky’s hands, Bucky’s lips, Bucky’s heat, Bucky’s body on his own, Bucky’s chest against him, Bucky’s heart thumping against his like anything, like everything.

Patience. Steve can have patience. Steve can try to have patience.

For Bucky, Steve _tries_.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


When Bucky comes back to him, it’s a mixed bag.

It’s a mixed bag, but what matters is that he comes back; that he keeps coming _back_.

Sometimes, he’s mostly blank, though it’s all sort of glazed with regret:

“A…politician,” Bucky says slowly, like his mouth’s coated in peanut butter and he can’t unstick his tongue. “In a car.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve wouldn’t know that he was trembling if he didn’t reach to pull him close.

He wouldn’t know if he didn’t; but he does.

“He didn’t deserve it,” Bucky shakes his head into Steve’s shoulder. “He didn’t—” 

“Shh,” Steve soothes him, best as he can. “Neither did you, Buck,” and that’s the God’s-honest truth if ever it was said: “Neither do you.”

Sometimes, it’s more confusion than anything else.

“Businessman. Maybe,” Bucky tells him, cross-legged on the floor across from Steve, staring off.

Steve doesn’t say anything. Just sits. Just is, there, with him.

“I think I know Russian,” Bucky finally adds, bewildered, after the silence stretches for a spell.

Steve tries to muffle a snort, but fails; draws Bucky’s gaze back toward him.

“You’re shit with languages,” Steve shrugs, and Bucky grins, but it’s sad.

The grins are usually sad.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Sometimes, it’s chaos. Sometimes, it breaks him.

“Howard,” is the only word that comes out after long minutes, hours maybe, of the shaking, of the screaming and the raging and the clinging to Steve only to push him away, only to grasp for him again, and Steve’s there, Steve will always be there, but sometimes.

Sometimes, it breaks them both.

“I think,” he starts; stammers. “I think I—” and Bucky doesn’t have to finish the sentence for Steve to understand, for Steve to know.

Bucky doesn’t have to finish the sentence. It doesn’t change the facts.

“You kept yourself safe,” Steve tells him, because that’s the only part that matters, now; the only part that they can build, that they can hold to: the only part that’ll stand to pin any hope on.

Bucky gapes at him, absolutely wrecked. 

“At what cost?” he moans like a wounded animal, and his eyes are begging, _begging_ for Steve to put him out of his misery, and sometimes Steve’s called upon to keep the promise of putting the man he loves back together.

This is one of those times.

So he draws Bucky as close as he can, and tucks Bucky’s head beneath his chin, and he lets Bucky shake and sob and claw at him until he quiets enough to hear anything over his ragged breaths, his waterlogged whimpering, his pounding, painful heart:

“There’s no price too high,” Steve says it, straight and sharp and true. “There’s no cost to this that you’re not worth paying.”

And for Steve, that’s the bottom line. There’s nothing there to sway.

Bucky, though, keeps shaking, and sometimes, it’s all just too much.

Steve grits his teeth, remembers strong arms around his skinny frame, and vows to keep them both as steady as he can.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Sometimes, though, it’s almost unbearable, it’s almost more than Steve can stand to see the way that Bucky comes apart in the aftermath.

The moment Bucky returns, appears, coalesces before Steve, he’s got his hands on Steve’s skin, pressed against Steve’s wrists, Steve’s neck at the sides, shivering before he draws Steve in and wraps around him, gasping without sobbing, somehow beyond tears or shouts or anything but trembling and struggling for air.

“Scientist,” he gasps, breathless and frantic and halfway to imploding, and Steve can feel the pressure, the very same pressure that’s waging an offensive in Bucky’s blood, Steve can feel it take place beneath his ribs and threaten to rip him to shreds.

“A scientist, and…” Bucky deflates, his eyes going so blank, so dead, so void of any light that Steve’s chest constricts with it in a way, with a force he’s never known before, but then Bucky’s gasping again, the whole of him wracking with the weight of his clamoring breaths: “Collateral.”

His eyes find Steve, and Steve feels his stomach drop with the fear, the absolute dread he finds, and it’s better than blank, better than dead, but only just.

Only _just_.

“I said your name,” Bucky says, and it’s a horrible thing, that confession, those words: it’s a horrible thing dragged kicking and screaming and broken from Bucky’s throat.

“They told me you were dead,” Bucky rasps. “They showed me, they...” 

And every word just cuts raw, and rawer still—starts slicing up Steve’s insides and leaving him with fresh blood in the back of his mouth, on the tip of his tongue for the way he bites his cheek against the onslaught.

“They lied,” Steve does his best to make his voice strong, to make his hands steady as he reaches for Bucky’s wrists. “They lied, because I’m here,” and he guides Bucky’s palms to the center of his chest and holds, and breathes, and _holds_ : “I’m right here.”

“How are you here?” Bucky asks, and where it should have an edge, should be a demand, it wavers, it damn well drips with despair. “Where are we, Stevie? How does any of this work, how do I disappear from you and fall into Hell itself only to come back and leave again and again and again, how…”

He drifts, and when he blinks, now, there’s wetness there that shivers, that ultimately falls.

“I don’t know,” Steve breathes, and it hurts. Goddamn, but it hurts.

“What is this, Steve?” Bucky whispers, and it cuts all the deeper for the way his voice draws thin. “What are we? Ghosts? Hallucinations?”

“I don’t _know_!” Steve breaks with it, wrenches with its weight, because he doesn’t, he _doesn’t_ , and it feels like the gravest sin he could commit when Bucky’s face falls, even when Steve didn’t think it was possible—when Bucky’s breath catches, and his eyes start to stream.

It feels like a sin, and the only penance he can give is to counter it with all the truth he can give voice, make heard.

“But y’know what I do know?” Steve exhales, gentle but sure as he cups Bucky’s cheek, wipes the tears there as his own fall unchecked.

“I know what color your eyes turn in the sunset, and how it’s different from the color they turn in the sunrise, and how it’s different again if it’s a sunrise in Brooklyn, or a sunrise behind enemy lines.” And it’s true, it’s absolutely true, because Steve’s stared at Bucky’s eyes so long, in so many places, over so much time, that he can see those eyes when he closes his own, can focus on them at will and remember, through them, how to breathe again.

“I know you can hold your liquor like a man three times your size, but you’ll snore all night afterward,” and it’s a triumph, when Bucky’s mouth quirks, so slight you’d almost miss it, except Steve doesn’t miss a damned thing, not here, not with him. 

“I know how you breathe in your sleep. I know how every inch of your skin feels under my hands, and I know what it’s like to breathe in your air when we’re close, when you lean in to kiss me,” Steve cradles Bucky’s face closer and smiles soft as he loses himself in memory, now: “I know what your mama’s chocolate cake tastes like on your lips.”

And Bucky blinks, frowns, his brow all furrowed and Steve wants to kiss it, wants to taste that skin in this moment, but then Bucky’s eyes grow wide as he remembers that time, that night.

“That,” Bucky stammers, voice still rough, but the weight’s starting to lift as Steve moves thumbs across his cheeks, back and forth. “That was a demonstration.”

Steve chuckles, feather light for just an instant as he lets himself get lost in that feeling, the sweetness on his tongue. 

“I’d wanted your mouth on mine for _years_ before that night,” and Steve lets the pads of his fingers trail to Bucky’s lips. “Do you know how many times I’d chickened out before I settled on pretending to ask you why none of the gals you brought ‘round for me seemed to like me kissing ‘em?”

Steve raises an eyebrow and does very little to dampen his grin as Bucky leans in, nips at Steve’s lower lip as he presses close for a bruising kiss, smacking Steve on the arm as he draws back.

“Punk,” he exhales soft, letting soft hands fold him into Steve’s chest, Steve’s embrace.

“Hmm, maybe,” Steve concedes, breathing in Bucky’s scent, burying his nose in Bucky’s hair. “Was worth it.”

And Steve shivers, melts into the way that Bucky’s lips form the words against the line of his collarbone: “It was.”

Yeah, Steve thinks: it _was_.

They breathe like that, soft and slow and near, until the breathing doesn’t echo so hard between them.

“You okay?” Steve asks, and Bucky shrugs.

“Okay as I’m gonna get,” he murmurs, foggy as exhaustion starts to creep, as he starts to sag against Steve’s chest.

“You never gave me an answer, you know,” Bucky says after a few moments of quiet, the words stumbling and just shy of slurred, and while Steve knew Bucky hadn’t drifted off just yet (the rhythm of his breathing wasn’t right for it), he could tell that Bucky was damn-near asleep.

“Hmm?”

“Before,” Bucky breathes out, warm at Steve’s neck, and Steve frowns a little, unsure where this is headed, unsure where Bucky’s mind is taking him in the dark.

“Before when?”

Buck shifts, and his mouth is an open ring, hot and wet on the pulse in Steve’s neck.

“Said I’d thought about giving you a ring,” Bucky yawns, and his lips drag against Steve’s flesh. “That night, with the cake,” he adds through a fog: “Thought about it then.”

And Bucky’s mouth is an open ring, so he’s got to feel the way Steve’s heart starts pumping harder at those words.

“You didn’t answer,” Bucky whispers, and the shape of his subtle frown is a perfect thing, the lilt of a pout in his voice is a goddamned _perfect thing_.

“Didn’t answer what?” Steve asks, just a little bit breathless.

“If I gave you a ring,” Bucky exhales, and he’s caught between waking and dreaming, and Steve doesn’t want to break the spell of it, the untouched haze. “What would you say?”

“Jesus, Barnes,” Steve tries to swallow around the pace of his heart, around the bubble of joy that comes out in a grin that damn well _hurts_ in the best possible way. “I think I’ve earned at least a decent meal before you pop the question. We’ve never even been on a date.”

“Hmm, date,” Bucky hums into his shoulder. “We’ll go on a date.”

“Should I pencil you in, then? Next week, maybe?” Steve asks, wrapping Bucky up against him and curling around him so that if there’s any part of him that’s warm, it’s warm for the touch of James Buchanan Barnes.

“Mmm, yeah,” Bucky huffs out, sounding muffled, drifting, but satisfied: “Next week’ll be good.”

Steve counts the breaths until he knows that Bucky’s asleep, and then follows for the first time in forever with a smile on his face.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Bucky’s gone again by the time Steve wakes up. Of course he is.

And things follow as they normally do, with the anger and the sadness and finally the patience, because patience is all that he has.

Patience, and hope.

So mostly, after he pummels whatever presents itself for the job, and exhausts himself enough to see reason: after that, he sits, as he usually does, and thinks. Remembers.

Prays, too. He prays that Bucky’s okay, that nobody breaks him, or hurts him beyond what Steve can fix. He prays that Peggy’s alright, that what he did worked, or at least mattered somehow, to someone: that he pointed that ship toward the water and it wasn’t all in vain. He prays that his mom, and Bucky’s mom, are well in whatever’s after.

Most of all, though, he prays that Bucky will return, and if Bucky can’t return, that Steve will go wherever it is he goes: that whatever happens, no power in the universe will ask them to be apart.

So when the lights start to flicker, from wherever the lights come from; when the walls start to shake, whatever they are made of, whatever they mean: when it all starts to crumble, Steve wonders if this is what leaving feels like, what goes through Bucky’s mind, Bucky’s veins when he disappears to wherever he goes.

Steve wonders, and his heart starts to pound, because maybe this is an answer to all that praying: maybe he’s going where Bucky is, maybe he’s finally going to be allowed to save that one soul that means everything, that one soul that’s always saved him, that saves him now just by continuing to _be_ : maybe Steve doesn’t have to be useless, anymore.

The lights dim, and then get bright, too bright, and Steve closes his eyes against it, and damn it _all_ —

He _hopes_.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Bucky comes back to his body—is it, though? Which body is his? Which life is real?—but he comes back to his body slowly; comes back to his body shaking, near-seizing.

Comes back to his body, alone.

And he looks. Of course he looks. 

And he calls Steve’s name, until his throat is raw. Of course he does.

And he screams. Of course he screams. He screams until there’s no more voice in him, until there’s blood on his palms for the grasping and the clawing and the tearing.

And it’s very clear, in his mind, just then: the moment he met that scrawny boy on the streets of Brooklyn, getting the shit kicked out of him but standing as tall as his puny little frame would let him—Bucky remembers it, and it’s very, very clear to him just how much he needs Steve Rogers; just how much he’s always needed him, always will need him, and just how little he knows how to _breathe_ without him. Steve’s been a part of him for so long, he’s bled into his bones: Bucky doesn’t remember how to _be_ without him.

So where he can’t find Steve in any corner, any nook or cranny of this place, he turns elsewhere, turns inward: latches onto the Steve that’s written in every crevice of his mind, every corner of his heart, and lets it all seep in, lets it overflow until it’s all that exists, all that he contains, and it streams from his eyes and gasps from his lips for longer than he can see, longer than he can know, until he feels it: the prickle at the back of his neck, the heaviness in his limbs, the cold around his left hand.

They’re coming.

And all that matters, without Steve here, without Steve _close_ , is to protect what’s left at any cost, at _all costs_ , so he molds it, he wraps it, he holds it, he lets himself savor the feel of its warmth before he buries it, deeper now than it’s ever been, deeper than it’s ever gone, than _he’s_ ever gone and it’s all that he is, all that he has so once he covers it, layers the unknown over it, and over it, until there’s nothing to be saved, he thinks one last thought before it all goes dark:

_Find me, Steve. Please, let it be enough so you can find me._

_Steve_.

  


————————————————————————————————

  


Steve’s reeling in the middle of a foreign land.

Because it’s all bright lights and flashing panels and buildings, more buildings, bigger buildings and guns, bigger guns, pointed at him and the man with the eyepatch is saying things that make no damn _sense_ , and what they’re breaking is the truth, what they’re breaking isn’t the news that decades have passed and it’s the _future_.

What they’re saying is that he was asleep—he was _asleep_ , and where’s Bucky, where would Bucky be seventy years later, God, oh, _Christ_ ; what they’re saying is that he was nowhere, and nothing, and suspended in the ether, and they’re not breaking the truth to him.

They’re telling him he’s been dreaming for seventy years, and it’s breaking his goddamned _heart_.

So when they ask if he’s going to be okay, his mouth shapes words he doesn’t think on, doesn’t mean. When they ask if he’s going to be okay, all he thinks of is Bucky: Bucky in his arms, Bucky against his chest, Bucky in his _dreams_ except they were real, so real, but what if they weren’t, what if Bucky never kissed him like he was everything, what if Bucky never made love to him like he was precious, like he was breakable now even when he wasn’t; what if Bucky never talked about a ring, what if—

When they ask if he’s going to be okay, Steve’s mouth only moves because his mind’s spinning:

“Yeah, I just,” he breathes, only because it’s instinct, only because his brain’s not thinking, because if it was, if there was _sense_ in it, he’d never have managed, never have got it all coordinated to even just gasp:

“I had a _date_.”

  


————————————————————————————————

  


He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who he is.

He doesn’t know _what_ he is.

He knows one word.

“Steve.”

There’s a sound—buoyant and frivolous and lanced through with hate; there’s a sound at his side that makes something ache, if ache is the right word, the right concept to match what this is.

“This one’s going to give Garrett an inferiority complex,” there is a sound—words, hateful words, from where the buoyant hate came first. “Seems he’s a bona fide Clairvoyant. Knows exactly who we thawed him out to kill.”

There’s pressure near his neck, on his shoulder: touch.

He remembers touch, but not how, not why.

There’s a face in front of him, all creases and curling lips that don’t seem right.

“Comrade,” the curved lips move, and the word is hateful: this is where the sounds have been coming from.

“The asset is no longer programmed to respond to ‘Comrade.’”

Another sound, another voice, another stream of words from elsewhere: blank. Rote.

Blank and rote like him.

“Asset,” the hateful curling creases say instead.

“The asset is not programmed to respond to ‘Asset.’” Blank and rote.

The curling-lips look sour, and the voice grows more hateful, louder and tinged with an edge that he feels should spike in his blood, but doesn’t.

Blank. Rote.

“Then what goddamned name should I use to send this fucking thing after his targets?” The face looming in his vision is taut, now, pulled tight and reddening.

“The asset does not have a name, Councilor Pierce.”

The face is called Councilor Pierce.

“Steve,” he says, because it’s the only word he knows.

“You’re shitting me,” the Councilor Pierce bites out, “Did you name him Steve? Is that your idea of a fucking joke?”

He doesn’t flinch in response. He realizes, belatedly, that his arms and legs are bound, that he’s strapped down tight: couldn’t flinch if he wanted to.

He doesn’t know if he wants to.

“The asset does not have a—”

“Steve,” he says again, because he thinks they mean him, when they say comrade, when they say asset.

They mean him, but he cannot be those things.

He only knows one word.

“Wipe him,” the Councilor says, harsh and cold. “Wipe him, and reprogram him to respond to _something_ , and then we’ll talk.”

“Sir.” Blank and rote.

“Sleep well, Soldier.” There’s pressure on his shoulder again, a hand, he thinks, and he moves his eyes in their sockets as best he can to follow the motion, the movement: he sees the hand, the gleam of metal, the splotch of red below.

“Captain America’s no push over. You’re gonna need your rest to take him down.”

He opens his mouth, because it feels like a privilege, like something he needs to take advantage of while he can.

He opens his mouth, and means to say _Steve_ just one more time, just once, though he doesn’t know why.

It goes blank, though: it all goes blank before he gets his chance.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, this has a very clear sequel—though it _could_ also stand alone, as it is. If you have a preference, I'd love to hear it.
> 
> Otherwise: [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com). If that's your jam.


End file.
